Michael Tanner

Original sin | 17 March 2016

But is the same true of the austere original version of the opera that this Richard Jones production are using?

The Royal Opera has bitten the bullet so far as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov goes, and opted to stage the original 1869 version, with no modifications or additions from his revised 1874 edition, which used to be called ‘definitive’ but which seems to be under a cloud nowadays. Rimsky-Korsakov’s version has been pushed right to the back of the doghouse, so that it might soon be revived for its historical interest. Before I launch into my praise of the new production, which is an unqualified triumph, I would like to register some reservations about the work itself, in any of its versions.

It’s routinely said that the hero of the opera is not Boris but the Russian people, tormented and downtrodden as they have always been and still are. As portrayed unflinchingly by Musorgsky and his source Pushkin, they are credulous of the latest rumours, especially nasty ones, quick to change sides, prone to bullying the less well-abled, in fact very much what crowds are, but hardly qualified to be called heroic. That is no doubt an accurate view of them, and it does what Musorgsky surely wanted to do, and that is to show the human condition as hopeless, cheerless, interesting only insofar as we have an appetite for misery.

Boris himself is not to any degree heroic: our first glimpse of him is as unwilling to become Tsar, and his opening address to the people is so downbeat that it’s amazing that they celebrate his coronation so exuberantly — this is marvellously done in this new production, the chorus electrifying and bells pealing out seemingly throughout the theatre. In the synopsis provided in the programme, after the account of the celebrations, we get in italics (meaning that this part of the story is not included in the opera), ‘Years pass.

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